


Libere

by imochan



Series: Interluda Series [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Explicit Language, Hogwarts Era, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, MWPP, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2490155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sirius leaves, 1976.</p><p>(originally written 2004)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Libere

**Author's Note:**

> The Interluda Series was originally written on LJ in 2004.

_Fuck_ , Sirius thinks, blankly.  _Fuck, stop shaking_. He can’t open his bag, and his vision’s blurred with rain and his knuckles are still bleeding, all scraped and people are  _staring_  now,  _fuck_ , he thinks,  _fuck fuck shite fuck arse._  
  
He gives up trying to figure out how much the Muggle Underground costs, gripping his wand like a burning lifeline in his pocket. He hunches in the stairwell and clutches his bag to him and bites a bleeding knuckle because he can hardly breathe.  _Should’ve taken the Knight Bus,_  he thinks, and then  _fuck the fucking Knight Bus, you can take care of yourself!_  
  
He can feel his wand against his leg, in his pocket, long, burning, condemning brand. And  _oh god_ , he thinks, gnawing at his fist,  _oh Christ and Merlin, oh shite_ , because The  _Ministry_ , and he hasn’t just done a charm, a spit of a spell, what could be an overlookable, he’s done an Unforgiveable, and  _oh god_ , he thinks, feeling his throat seize up, vision shattering liquidly.  _Not that she didn’t deserve it_ , he thinks, in a strange fit of humour that sends the bile roiling up his stomach and into his mouth, where he chokes, spits, retches, crouched over his bag, wet, starving, shaking, scared, free.   
  
He spits, feels a twinge-rattle of a loose tooth, remnants of blood in his throat. He rolls his tongue over his mouth, slowly, tasting the way the impact of Grimmauld’s stairs feels, now, that he never has to see them again. He spits, again, phlegm and blood and disgust into the gutter. He thinks about waiting for the rain to stop. And he laughs, to himself, at that, leaning back, letting the concrete soak his trousers.  _It’s London,_  he thinks,  _it won’t ever stop raining. It won't ever stop._  He closes his eyes.

\---  
  
He wakes up when someone throws a few pence onto the ground in front of him, and he's so shocked, for a moment, he just stares. The rain bounces off it, and people stride by in muddy galoshes, with umbrellas for faces, hooked arms and high shoulders and the money sits there. Part of him rears up angry, like a screaming chimera, pride broiling in his chest like acid, but part of him, the part where his dirty, bleeding fingers scrabble along the ground and pick up the coins in his muddy palm, part of him merely sighs and thinks of a hot cup of coffee.  
  
He buys one with slightly shaking hands from a cafe on Belgrove street, near King's Cross station. He sits in the window and watches his reflection breathe, slowly, cataloguing how he looks now, against transparent, spattered windows. He looks a little gangly, even hunched and all wet dog, with his hair plastered down to his dirty neck and cheeks and forehead. He closes his eyes and inhales the steam from the paper coffee cup and sees Remus’s farm kitchen behind his eyelids, and remembers the sound of Remus’s laughter when they came in from swimming and he shook himself off, water arcing onto Remus’s arms and bare, freckled shoulders.   
  
He sips the coffee, eyes shut, and burns his tongue but doesn’t care, because he remembers Peter’s mum’s cherry turnovers in the backyard in the summer of first year, when they lay on the grass and the sky looked like a cloud-blue tablecloth. And when later at night Peter pointed out all the constellations he knew, and he showed Sirius where he was in the sky. Sirius remembers saying he could never see himself in London, from his window.  
  
He slumps onto his elbows, cup cradled in one hand, and breathes, and thinks  _James._  He thinks again,  _James James James James James_ , as if thinking it enough would be loud enough to let James know, and James would come and find him. It’s all he thinks, all he can do. 

When he looks up, it’s because someone has touched his wrist. There’s a girl sitting across from him, with bright, glassy-blue eyes, and curly black hair, wet and hanging around her face.   
  
“Oi,” she says.  
  
“Oi,” says Sirius, staring.  
  
“Aren’t you a mess, then,” she says, not missing a breath. She smells a little like sweet herbs. Behind her, he can see three blokes, and another girl.   
  
“Yeah,” he says, and wonders if he’s going to get beat up. “Am a bit.”  
  
“Want some grass?” says the girl, and smiles.  
  
Sirius very much does.

\---  
  
The girl’s name is Bea, and she has a large, red van parked in an alley, where they all clamber into the back and they play the kind of music Gideon Prewett likes, and sit cross-legged on the rugs and smoke. And Sirius is heavy-eyed and tired, but warm now, like feeling Grimmauld evaporate from body with the rain. He imagines he can see the steam and laughs until his cheeks hurt.  
  
One of the blokes, Ray, has been to India, and he shows Sirius some of the things he brought back: necklaces, pipes, long thick rolls of fabric, and a little carved-wood wolf.   
  
Sirius holds it in his palm, and tells them about Remus, except not  _that_  part, because they’re Muggles after all, but enough, the important bits, like his voice when he tells you off after being a stupid arse, and the way he looks in the morning, sleeping, and the way he bites his thumb when he reads, which is a lot, and the obscene obsession he has with chocolate. He tells them about Peter, who isn’t very smart, and doesn’t try all that hard, really, but who would cut off his own hand for you, he would, says Sirius.   
  
He tries to talk about James. But his throat seizes up, stops working, and he just feels like laughing, or crying. He can’t tell.  
  
Sirius sleeps in the back while Bea drives them to Holland Park. She kisses him when he gets out, bag crushed in his arms, one held out sort of stupidly when Ray puts the little wooden wolf into his palm.   
  
He stands – parched, buzzed, vision a little blurred - at the gate to James’s house, which is big and red and brick with flowers growing like ivy all over the windows, as he watches them drive away. He hears James’s voice from inside the house, and sees the swish of Mrs. Potter’s skirt in the window and Sirius is suddenly reeling, overwhelmed. He sits down in the dirt of the road, back to the gate, tips his head up and cries, while the sun washes Grimmauld from his skin. 

\---

[imo @ lj](http://imochan.livejournal.com/)   
[myuntreatedstate @ tumblr ](http://myuntreatedstate.tumblr.com)


End file.
